In today's world, a variety of systems have been developed to efficiently distribute goods and/or services from producers and providers of those goods and/or services to their end users. In addition, many systems have been developed to facilitate distribution of revenues from those end users to each of the parties involved in producing, providing, and distributing the goods and services. Traditionally, producers of goods may manufacture their products in large quantities and store them in one or more warehouses. Various distributors may then collect selected goods from the warehouses of various manufacturers and transport those selected and collected goods to merchants (e.g., supermarkets, shopping centers, convenience stores, or other retail establishments). In turn, consumers may travel to the merchants' facilities, load shopping carts with their selected items, and proceed to a checkout lane to enable a clerk to generate an inventory of the selected items.
Based on that inventory, the clerk and the consumer may then settle the transaction by effecting a settlement such as a payment (e.g., transfer of cash, commercial paper, electronic funds transfer, credit transaction, and/or debit transaction). Depending upon the form of settlement, the parties involved in producing, providing, and distributing those goods and services may then transfer and/or distribute funds among themselves to settle each of their contributions to the process.
In conjunction with the distribution of goods and services from suppliers to consumers, and the compensating flow of revenues from consumers to both suppliers and distributors, a variety of difficulties, inconveniences, and/or inefficiencies may be encountered as each of the parties attempts to accomplish their individual objectives. For example, as a consumer proceeds through a retail establishment (e.g., a grocery store), the consumer is typically required to first locate the items the consumer wishes to purchase, and to then transport those items to a checkout location. Unfortunately, it can be cumbersome and time consuming for the consumer to locate the section of the store (e.g., the dairy aisle, the dry cereal aisle) where the items the consumer desires (e.g., milk, oatmeal) are located, to find the most efficient path between each of those locations, and to transport all of the collected items to a checkout line. Where the consumer's shopping list contains many items, particularly when the list was prepared by a person other than the consumer, locating each of the items on the list may be time consuming and inefficient, involving many trips back and forth throughout the store as the consumer proceeds through the list.
From the perspective of the merchant, it may be desirable to make the task of shopping more efficient, convenient, and satisfying for the consumer. It may also be desirable to increase sales by presenting individuals with an increased number of choices in specific areas, by increasing the effectiveness of incentive offerings, and by reducing the impact and/or occurrence of undesirable events such as abandonment (i.e., a potential buyer's act of failing to complete a purchase), return (i.e., a buyer's act of returning previously purchased goods for a refund), and remorse (i.e., a buyer's dissatisfaction subsequent to a completed purchase).
Similarly, from a supplier's perspective, it may also be desirable to improve the consumer's shopping experience and to increase the volume of sales in many of the same ways as the merchant, but it may also be desirable to acquire information about consumer behavior and their actions in response to specific stimuli. For example, suppliers of goods may wish to test the effectiveness of specific targeted offers, which may be tailored to individual consumers and/or identifiable environmental conditions. In addition, it may be desirable to improve the ability of suppliers and other participants in the supply chain (e.g., raw material suppliers, manufacturers, producers, wholesalers, distributors, truckers, financiers, investors) to easily and quickly collect and access information regarding the flow of goods and services to consumers. Such information may be useful to effectively test various marketing and/or distribution tactics and may also be useful in effectively managing production and distribution to reduce necessary inventories.
Although it may be a goal of most or all participants in the supply chain to improve the consumer's shopping experience, several aspects of the traditional shopping process may detract from this goal. For example, once a consumer has traveled to the merchant's facility, located and collected all of the desired goods, and transported them to a checkout, the consumer typically then waits in a line before the consumer's selections may be inventoried and his/her purchase completed. At this checkout phase of the merchandizing process, delays may be encountered due to the volume of items being purchased by other patrons, the number of other patrons in line in front of the consumer, or inefficiencies in conducting the checkout by the other consumers and/or the clerk. Such inefficiencies in conducting checkout may occur during any of the processes to be accomplished by the consumer and the clerk. These processes may include any or all of the steps of inventorying the items in the consumer's shopping cart; determining a price associated with each item; applying any coupons, discounts or other incentive offerings; determining a subtotal; adding any applicable state or local taxes or other surcharges to the subtotal; presenting the consumer with a total amount due; receiving from the consumer a form of payment; verifying the identity of the consumer; obtaining an authorization of a guarantor or third party provider of financial services; obtaining the consumer's signature; processing the payment; providing a receipt to the consumer; and/or clearing the consumer's selected goods from the checkout area.
When the procedures associated with checkout have been completed, the clerk or another agent of the merchant may be required to perform additional processes such as, for example, ordering more goods to replace those purchased by the consumer, sending payments to any merchants whose goods may have been on consignment and for which payment is now made, seeking payment from the credit card company or other financial institutions where redemption of commercial paper or other payment means is to be made, tracking purchases made by the consumer, and collecting other desired information such statistics relating to offers presented to, declined by, or accepted by the consumer.
In addition to the impediments described above, traditional systems may facilitate collection of only limited information concerning the consumer's preferences and purchasing habits and may not make such information readily available to merchants or other supply chain participants. Similarly, it may not be convenient to collect and/or store information regarding the path traversed by consumers within specific merchant facilities or the length of time consumers spend in particular locations in those facilities—at least not in a manner that would facilitate appropriate dissemination and/or use of such information. Accordingly, assumptions must be made as to the most optimum paths in which to arrange the store and the most advantageous placement of goods and displays (e.g., incentive presentations and the like) within each facility.
For the purpose of modifying consumer behavior, merchants often present incentive offerings to potential consumers via newspaper ads or radio and television advertisements. Sometimes advertisements are directly mailed to a consumer's home address. Accordingly, such incentive offerings are frequently presented to consumers when they are physically separated from the goods or services being incented (e.g., at home watching television or reading a newspaper, in a car listening to a radio). As a result, consumers perceiving, and desiring to take advantage of, incentive offerings typically travel to a merchant's store, locate the specific item associated with the incentive offering, and present, or otherwise reference, the incentive offering upon checkout. Further, incentive offers presented in the form of printed coupons may be cumbersome for a consumer to manage and track, making them less effective in modifying consumer behavior.
More recently, merchants have attempted to provide coupons to consumers directly in merchant facilities where the obstacles between the perception and the acceptance of an incentive offer (e.g., the purchase of an incented item) may be completed. For example, current systems may be configured to provide a booklet of coupons or a coupon dispenser in close proximity to the incented items. However, difficulties have arisen with these types of systems where people consume the coupons without actually purchasing the product. For example, coupons are often wasted, discarded, and/or lost. Children may take multiple coupons without purchasing the incented items. Moreover, no system or method currently exists for tracking coupons as they are collected by the consumer (e.g., the identity of the consumer, the time of the dispensed coupon, what other items were purchased by the consumer, or other information that may be useful to a merchant distributing coupons).
Accordingly, it would be advantageous to have a system and method for facilitating a transaction between a merchant and a consumer wherein improvements in store layout, offers presented, pricing, inventory management, and payment reconciliation may be provided.